


On the Boardwalk That Day

by LyricOcean



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Bay Ending, Chloe lives, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricOcean/pseuds/LyricOcean
Summary: A "Bay Ending, Chloe survived" fic with a twist. Just something I thought up and had to write down.





	On the Boardwalk That Day

The sand was as fine as flour, the sky an azure blanket settled above, and as they travelled across on the boardwalk that day they would comment on it from time to time. 

Not always, and not for very long, but it was present. There would be stretches of time in which nothing was said at all. They would instead listen to the waves caressing the shore, or the manic squawking of the seagulls above. It was never quite quiet in Arcadia Bay.  
In the distance she heard cars driving, people talking, the faint but distinct tune of someone strumming on a guitar. Over the past month Arcadia Bay had started preparing for Christmas. Grocery shops played Christmas jingles Max had hated only last year. Decorations adorned houses. Preparing for a holiday Max had allowed them to celebrate. It was magical. It was amazing. The people were alive. She had saved them.

Only it wasn’t as simple as that. There had been a price. 

Struck by a sudden wave of emotion, she addressed the girl next to her. “I love you, Chloe.” 

Chloe glanced at her, different emotions flashing across her face -- happy, then confused, then happy and confused. “Uh, thanks, Max. Where’d that come from?” 

Max shrugged. She hadn’t told Chloe about the week she’d had with her yet. The week that had technically never happened, because time had rewound to delete it. The week that, had Max not intervened, would have led to the destruction of the entire town due to a supernatural hurricane. It was funny how these things turned out. “It came from me. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.” 

Chloe nodded, contemplating that, then nodded to an upcoming bench. “Right. Hey, I’m getting tired. Can we stop for a while?” She was tired a lot easier these days. Getting shot in the stomach would seem to do that to a person. 

Max wasn’t offended by the lack of response. “Of course.” 

They approached the bench and Max sat down, the old wood creaking faintly. For a moment they went back to the silence, staring out across the bay, watching the sky and the ocean melt until they were an indistinct boiling point on a horizon almost too far away to comprehend. 

Then Chloe broke the silence. “You know, when the doctors first told me about… you know, all the complications and shit that happened, I thought it was the worst thing in the world. I was like, ‘Well shit, he may as well have killed me, ‘cause now I have to suffer through the rest of my life.’ I thought getting shot was the hella worst thing ever.” 

Chloe didn’t elaborate on who ‘he’ was. Max was in the bathroom when the shooting happened, had watched the boy named Nathan Prescott rant and rave as he pulled the trigger on her. Had watched as Chloe’s legs lost their power and she’d collapsed to the floor in a spreading pool of red. 

Max blinked hard to get that image out of her head, and Chloe, who was looking out to the sea, kept talking. “But then I realised you were back in Arcadia. Better than that, you were visiting me in hospital and stuff, and … everything was suddenly okay. I just saw you and something in my brain clicked, and I knew. Things would be fine.” She shrugged and looked at Max, then away, like she was embarrassed. Brushing blue strands of hair back into her beanie. 

It made Max’s insides clench to ask, but she asked anyway. “Um. Well. I mean. Is that your way of saying you love me back?” The wind was cold, and she zipped her jacket up. Chloe removed the beanie from her head and offered it to Max, frowning slightly. “You’re not cold?” Max mumbled, taking it.

“This jacket’s super warm, so I’m good,” Chloe murmured back. This conversation was rendered soundless over the wind but each knew what the other was saying. 

Chloe herself was thinking about the day she’d got out of hospital. They’d taken her home and got her to her bedroom -- she’d been so weak and the stairs had been a struggle. In the end David had just carried her, her nose pressed to his shoulder to smell the traces of petroleum on his shirt. She’d hated the powerlessness of that. But Max had been there, and they’d sat in her room together for hours, talking about everything and nothing. Breaching the five year gap they’d carved between them like it was made of glass as thin as that line on the horizon. 

It was Christmas Eve. Fuck it. Chloe said, “Yeah. I love you, Max. Since we were kids. Never stopped.” She didn’t look across at Max as she said that. There was a lot more she wanted to say. If she didn’t have the self control that she had, she probably could have spent hours babbling about it -- that it was only ever Max, that she’d missed her so much over the years she hadn’t known what to do with herself, that it felt like destiny that they were together again -- but she shut her mouth. She’d lied about the jacket. She was cold in her core. Her head was cold. Max looked cute wearing her beanie. “In the gay way,” Chloe added, and Max giggled.

“Me too,” Max choked, hands clenched with obvious nerves. “In the... gay way. Ever since we were fourteen.” A pause. “A-Always.” 

They looked at each other for a moment, the punk and the hipster. 

Then they kissed, for a long moment. Max could taste the cigarettes on Chloe’s lips and she pressed her lips to hers all the much harder for it. There were sounds from the city but for the two of them it was completely silent, a pocket in time untouched by the rest of the world, nothing and no one present but the two of them.

When they pulled away they looked at each other like magic had been re-discovered in the world, and before they knew it they were laughing, and then crying, then laughing and crying all at once at the absurdity of it all. They held each other’s hands and kissed each other’s lips some more, wanting nothing more than to be close to each other, right now and forever. 

Max stood and suddenly they were off again. They didn’t know where they were going, and suddenly it didn’t matter. They were young. They were free. They were alive.

Max’s footsteps pounded on the boardwalk as she ran. Right behind her came the roaring of wheels turning as Chloe followed, arms pumping to accelerate as she followed her lover.


End file.
